


The Full Sentence

by The_Unoriginal_Sinner



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A LOT of Angst, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bisexuality, Coming Out, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Love Confessions, M/M, This is really self indulgent, author works through shit, let dean cry, long personal author's notes, via repressed bi dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:40:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27790909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Unoriginal_Sinner/pseuds/The_Unoriginal_Sinner
Summary: "Looking back over his life, it seemed like there was one train of thought that Dean had never let travel, a missing puzzle piece he hadn’t bothered to search for–a sentence that he just wouldn’t finish."--This is a brief story about reconciling who you wanted to be, with who you are.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	The Full Sentence

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing this seemingly out of nowhere in September of 2020. It had been about 7 years since I’d last watched an episode of Supernatural or thought much about its characters. So this is complete canon divergence and is not influenced by the rewatch and pseudo catch up I did in October and November (nor by the absolute mayhem of the final few episodes) This is not really about Supernatural, it’s about me- I just happen to be using Dean Winchester as a proxy to talk about confronting my own bisexuality. There are differences of course, gender being the major one, and specific influences- such as father/child relationships. Dean gets most of his burdens from his father, whereas all the pressure and expectations I fought were ones I had placed on myself. This is a brief story about reconciling who you wanted to be, with who you are.

-A Destiel Fanfiction written Seven Years Late-

\--

“Cas, **_do_ ** something!” Dean’s plea rattled the spiderwebs that clung to every surface in the old barn, but it was met with frightened eyes and cold laughter.

“Hasn’t he told you? He **_can’t!_ **” The Demon in the center of the room howled with malicious glee. “I had to see it for myself, but it’s true. The Winchesters’ faithful guard-angel has finally fallen!” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” Sam stood firm despite the blood from his forehead threatening to drip into his eyes. The boys had hoped to set a trap for the demon that had been tailing them the past few days, but it had caught up with them too quickly. Less incredulously, and with gentle eyes, Dean turned Sam’s question to Castiel. 

“Cas, what are they talking about?” He didn’t dare move and give the Demon a reason to attack him, but he was anxious that Castiel would not meet his eyes. 

“This is absolutely too good.” The Demon drawled. “I’m so glad I get to be the one to break the news!” They cocked their head and looked at Castiel as if he were a kitten in a box on the side of the road. “Angels aren’t meant to tango so closely with mortals. He played the game carefully for a while but poor, foolish Castiel has gone and done the most human thing you can possibly do!” At this, the Demon turned and fixed their eyes on Dean. “ _He’s fallen in love._ ” Dean’s face fell dumbstruck. Even Sam didn’t say a word. 

“Cas?” Dean tried to ask for an explanation but the words were pulled into the back of his throat by fearful, grasping hands. 

“It’s just so pathetic isn’t it!?” The Demon took a step closer to Castiel, who stood rooted to the spot and still would not look at Dean. “You pulled him out of hell and hung on his finger ever since!” Another step forward. “The Angel who gave up his wings for a man who will never love him back; I’ve heard that fable before, haven’t I?” Black smoke curled up around the Demon and Castiel, lifting them in the air. Sam and Dean each moved to lunge forward at the same time but were stopped by obsidian daggers materializing between their eyes. 

“Ah ah ah.” The Demon taunted. “He’s mine to dispose of now, boys.” Castiel clutched at his throat, choking on the sulphurous cloud that engulfed him. He finally turned his wide, sad eyes onto Dean. “Face it, Castiel. You wanted to become a mortal, and now you’ll die like one.” With a sharp turn of their forearm, the Demon materialized a long, black spear that plunged itself into Castiel’s torso. 

Dean’s eardrums ached from the volume of his own yell, and his knees buckled. Luckily, Sam, whose heart was not the one breaking, was able to grab the dagger in front of him and launch it into the Demon’s back. They roared in pain and wrapped themselves in smoke, disappearing into the shadows. When the cloud had vanished, Castiel’s limp body fell to the straw-covered earth below. 

\---

The drive to the hospital had been tense. Dean had kept a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel and a lead foot on the gas the whole way. Sam, who cradled a barely conscious and apparently mortal Castiel in the backseat, didn’t dare speak a word to his brother about what the Demon had said. So they didn’t talk. They didn’t talk as they carried Castiel into the emergency room lobby, they didn’t talk when the doctors whisked him away on a gurney, and they didn’t talk while they stood in a hospital waiting area, waiting to see if the newly fallen angel would stabilize or bleed to death. 

Dean didn’t think either. If there was one thing he had perfected in his life, it was not talking and not thinking about the feelings he didn’t want to look at—in situations like this most of all. Right now, Castiel being okay was the most important issue here, and Dean couldn’t afford to spiral. He knew that if he dared sit and think about it, he wouldn’t be able to stop and it would all spill out of him like black oil—viscous, dark, and poisonous. So he didn’t talk, and he didn’t think. He just waited. And he paced. The back of Dean’s neck prickled from the sensation of Sam’s eyes watching him walk up and down the hallway, but he couldn’t submit to being seen, not yet. 

After about thirty unbelievably tense minutes, a red-haired nurse walked through a swinging double door and came towards them. Sam stood and looked at her expectantly, but Dean could only stare at her bulky, white sneakers. She held a clipboard close to her chest but smiled gently. 

“Your friend is stable. He lost a lot of blood but he’s going to be alright.” Dean reached for the cold wall next to him with his hand, and slowly leaned his weight against it. “He’s sleeping now,” The nurse continued, “And he will be for a little while. But we’re out of the woods.” Dean could hear Sam thank the nurse, followed by the squeak of her shoes as she retreated back through the swinging door, but his vision was starting to swim. Now that he knew Cas was safe, that Cas was going to be okay, his own troubles started to crash down on him from all sides. He was drowning. 

“Dean, hey—are you okay?” Sam reached out a hand to him, but refrained from making contact. He could tell Dean was reeling.

“Yeah I just–” Dean was surprised by how broken and quiet his voice sounded. “I’ve gotta... I’ve gotta go.” He didn’t wait for Sam’s approval before tearing off through the hospital and out into the parking lot. Dean didn’t feel safe until he had shut himself into the front seat of the impala. And then out it spilled.

Looking back over his life, it seemed like there was one train of thought that Dean had never let travel, a missing puzzle piece he hadn’t bothered to search for–a sentence that he just wouldn’t finish. When he was little, he could remember watching old cowboy movies with his father while John was home between hunts. In fact, one of his few memories of his mother was her remarking on how attractive Kurt Russell was, and young Dean couldn’t help but agree. The men in those movies were strong, brave and rough around the edges. Dean admired the confident way they moved, the brute masculine strength in the way they brawled and rode their horses. He thought he would like to be like that when he was older. But there was something more to his fixation with his favorite cowboys that he just couldn’t figure out, he wanted to be like them, but he felt something else too, something he couldn’t understand or name. 

As he got older he began to call this feeling envy. He could appreciate men who had large muscles, because he wanted some. He was jealous of the boys in his class whose voices had already dropped and whose cheekbones were hardening, because his hadn’t. That was all it was: he could recognize that a man was handsome, because he wanted to be handsome. That’s all it was. Surely that’s all it was. Sam was never quite as concerned about those things, but other boys at school talked about trying to look good for girls, so that made sense. He wanted to look good for girls. Because he did like girls. When his mother was still alive, Dean had looked at his parents and saw true love. True love, so he had been told, was when a boy and a girl met and felt like nothing else in the world mattered. The idea of meeting the perfect girl and falling in love made Dean’s heart flutter and skip. Girls were lovely, and that feeling became stronger and stronger as Dean got older. He loved the soft shape of them, their full lips and fluid curves. And he was in good company, the older he got the more he and his friends spent all their time talking about girls. Who had grown tits, who was likely to put out, and other locker-room teenage boy thoughts. His Father encouraged it most of all, not directly exactly, but John would frequently jape with Dean about beautiful women on tv, and ask him about the girls in his life. 

In contrast, John filled Dean’s formative years with casual comments against men being attracted to other men. He was never blatantly homophobic in front of his sons, but Dean could pick up from a young age that men were not meant to be attracted to other men. It made them unmanly, weak, strange, and stupid. Since Dean didn’t feel he was any of those things, he figured his fascination and general attraction to men was superfluous. He wasn’t gay, He assumed every man felt the same things that he did, and appreciated the same qualities in other men that he appreciated. He _wasn’t_ gay. so he pushed back against those thoughts. Buried them down deep where they couldn’t reach him. Dean embraced his macho qualities and strived in every way to be a man’s man like his father and the cowboys that he admired so much. He turned so far in the opposite direction that the mere mention of homoseuxality made him frightened, flustered and uneasy. He didn’t know how to react when confronted with it. He turned away from every chiseled jaw, tight ass and muscular arm that might have otherwise caught his attention, and focused on the beautiful women that filled the world around him. The world was built for love between man and woman, and he felt more than comfortable with that. Filling his life with soft curves and breasts was no trial. And clearly, if he loved women so much then that was definitive proof! There was no more to be explored, no more to consider, nothing to fear. 

But in the back of his mind there were thoughts that Dean couldn’t escape. Stubbled faces and strong hands permeated his dreams no matter what Dean filled his nights with. But that didn’t mean anything. Those were just dreams. So the sentence went unfinished. The author had thrown down his pen. Out of fear of what might be written, Dean threw himself deeper into the arms of women. A hunter’s life made avoiding attachment easy, so Dean became a bit of a player, leaving a string of one night stands with countless women behind him. He never got attached and he never ventured out of the safety net of heterosexuality. Love and Men were equality terrifying to him so he partook of neither. It was frighteningly easy to tell himself that he didn’t need those things. Sex was sex and he could have that whenever he wanted. He avoided the sentence still, even when he began to suspect that other men did not feel the same as he did. Other straight, American, red blooded males did not obsessively watch every episode of _Dr. Sexy, MD_. Other straight men didn’t focus just as much on the man in the pornography as they did the woman. And they definitely didn’t contemplate looking for male on male videos. If he didn’t look at it, didn’t think about it, didn’t speak of it, it wasn’t there. 

Then, Dean met Castiel. In the depths of the pit. He thought he would never escape that abyss of nightmare. It swallowed him whole like a lovecraftian beast that ate and ate and ate and preyed on your darkest and most horrible emotions while it digested you over millennia. All he could remember of being saved was an unbelievable, scorching bright light. When he was finally confronted with the angel who saved him from his doom he was awestruck. Castiel was terrifying; truly awesome in the biblical sense of the world. To imagine that such a being had chosen Dean as worthy for a greater purpose, had held him and put him back together from the shattered pieces was almost too overwhelming to bear. And then he stayed. Castiel stayed with Dean, and together they formed a greater connection than Dean had ever made with anyone in his entire life outside of Sam. He was closer to Castiel than he was with his own father, and he couldn’t imagine life without him. For better or for worse and completely without realising it, Castiel had become an essential part of him. An extension of his very being. 

And of course if he ever dared to stop and consider it, to consider whether or not he found Castiel attractive– the answer is yes. Tan skin, full, lips and eyes that burn so bright and blue with the full power of the heavens. The second he caught that first glimpse of Castiel's wings he knew that this was the most exquisite creature he’d ever lay eyes on. But to put it plain and simple, Dean found Jimmy Novak’s physical form attractive, and that was too much to confront. He avoided it as much as he could, but Cas was everything. Always there, always so close, so warm, so powerful. Dean was enthralled by him.

Dean’s eyes filled with tears as he strained to capture the few stars visible in the sky above. Of course there was more to the sentence. There always had been. He just could never say it before now. But now it was ripped out of him, ripped from his chest like his own soul had been raised from Hell years ago. He was attracted to men. He was attracted to Castiel. More than that, he loved him. He loves him. He is in love with Castiel. And God help him, when Cas wakes up he is going to tell him. Because stifling his emotions any longer would kill him. The fear of who he is is not worth the pain that denying it will cause. Dean heaved a deep breath and felt like air was truly entering his lungs for the first time.

And then he wept. Because he knew. This is who he was and this is who he always had been. And, try as you might, you can never outrun destiny. Trying to fight it can only cause despair. Welcoming this truth into his heart made Dean feel complete for the first time. The ache of abandonment, the uncertainty of his own path in life and mortality felt numbed. All that mattered was Castiel. All that mattered was that Dean knew finally, _finally_ who he was meant to be and what he really wanted for himself. He chose Castiel so long ago... and now it was time to voice his one wish.

Dean wiped his eyes and climbed out of the impala. He walked slowly but purposefully back to the waiting room where he had left Sam. He found him still there, sitting at a table and making a pyramid of stacked pudding cups on the sterile, white surface.

“Sammy…” Dean cleared his throat.

“It’s okay Dean, you don’t have to say anything.”

“No I want to, Sam. I need to.” He looked up and met his brother's patient, unfaltering eyes. “I need to.”

“Okay.” 

Dean didn’t feel brave enough, or secure enough in the ability to use his legs to move from where he stood. So he opted to lean against the wall behind him for support, one leg up in an act of nonchalance– but the arms folded protectively across his abdomen gave him away. 

“I love him too.” Dean stared at the polished linoleum floor. 

“Good. I’m glad.”

Dean looked up, not uncomfortable, but unsure. “You’re not surprised?” 

“Not really, no.” Sam fiddled with the plastic lid on one of the pudding cups. “Like he’s said before, you and Cas have always had a _‘profound bond.”_ He dropped his voice low in imitation of Castiel’s timbre and Dean couldn’t help but smile. “And I dunno...I’ve always kind of…thought that maybe you…” He inclined his head to silently finish the sentence. “Does that bother you?”

“No.” Dean shrugged. “I guess not.” His stomach twisted and urged him to stop shoving thoughts away. “Well, maybe it makes me feel a little stupid.” Sam’s brows turned up in that puppy dog way he had and Dean wanted to tell him to take his pity and shove it. “I’ve been lying to myself about it for so long, ignoring it. But everybody else could tell? Why didn’t you ever bring it up?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to talk about it.” Dean couldn’t argue with that. He wouldn’t have. “And honestly I wasn’t sure; ‘ _everybody_ ’ didn’t know, Dean, and you’re not stupid for hiding something that you didn’t want to see. I just had a couple bi friends in college and sometimes I thought you might feel similarly.”

Dean huffed a laugh. “Of course you did. Figures, you’re the one who defies Dad and goes to a free wheelin’ liberal college, but I’m the one who turns out to be a fruit.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t have to shake the foundations of the earth Dean. You’re not any different than you were an hour ago.” He picked up two cups of pudding. “You’ve always known you like chocolate, but that doesn’t mean you can’t like vanilla too. One doesn’t negate the other.” 

“A pudding analogy? Really?” Dean cracked a lopsided grin. 

“Yeah, really.” Sam smiled back at him and they both shared a laugh that warmed the cold hospital walls just slightly. When their laughter faded, things were quiet again for a moment before Sam spoke again, tone turned serious. 

“And...if you’re worried about what Dad would think…” Dean flexed his fingers. “He’s dead. So it doesn’t matter.” Sam’s face was calm and resolute when Dean looked up at him in shock. “But honestly, I don’t think it would bother him. Dean, you’re so much the man he wanted you to be. I know he was proud of you. And if Cas can make you as happy as Mom made Dad, he would want that for you. You deserve that.” 

Dean shuffled over to his brother and collapsed in the chair next to him. Sam grabbed him by the shoulder of his jacket and pulled him in for a hug. “You’re my big brother, Dean. I love you, nothing can change that.”

They were still sort of holding on to each other when the nurse with the red hair and white sneakers returned. Dean sniffed some errant tears away, but realized he didn’t care if she saw him crying and hugging his baby brother. He was moving past all that now. 

“The drugs should be wearing off soon, if you’d like to be there when he comes out of it.” She was looking right at Dean, like she knew. Like she’d seen hundreds of distressed partners over the years and knew what love looked like. Sam squeezed Dean’s bicep and nudged him to stand. The nurse nodded and smiled at Dean and he followed her through the swinging doorway to a bright and sunny hospital room. Castiel was snuggled peacefully under a pale blue waffle knit blanket, and Dean’s heart clenched a bit just seeing him. He looked over his shoulder, but the nurse had already disappeared.

Dean wiped his hands on his jeans and helped himself to the chair pulled up beside Castiel’s bedside. No sooner had he sat down than Castiel’s eyelids twitched and he turned to blink up at Dean. They smiled brightly at each other and Dean’s hand flew out instinctually to capture Castiel’s within his fingers.

“Hey Buddy.” Dean felt heat prickling in his eyes. Castiel was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Of course he loved him. 

“Hello Dean.” Castiel beamed at Dean with the pure unfiltered radiance of Heaven. 

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course Dean, anything.”

“Did it hurt?” 

“When I was impaled?” Castiel’s brow furrowed. “Yes, it was excruciatingly painful.” 

“No I- Cas you’re supposed to say, ‘Did what hurt?’ Lemme start again.” Dean sighed.

“Did it hurt?”

“Did...what hurt?”

“When you fell from heaven?” Dean raised an eyebrow at Castiel, who only brought his own closer together. 

“Uh, well no. It didn’t involve actual falling–”

“No! Uhg–” Dean dropped his head onto the thin blanket draped over Castiel. “It’s a very common pickup line, Cas. It’s...you know, it implies that you’re an angel who fell from heaven–which, you are, so I thought that would add an extra layer of humor to– you know what? Forget it.” 

“Oh.” Castiel was quiet for a moment, before noticing that Dean’s hand was still clasped with his own. He began to stroke his thumb across Dean’s rough knuckles. “Why did you want to tell me a pickup line?” Dean lifted his head, and his eyes were soft and more tender than Castiel had ever seen them.

“Cas, is this what you want?” He wet his lips. “Do you want to be human? Do you...do you want to love me?” 

“Yes. I want to love you. I’ll always choose you, Dean.”

“Good. Because I choose you too.” Dean leaned forward and pressed his lips to Castiel’s. They were chapped and dry, but unimaginably soft, and Dean felt a little bit of moisture beckoning from their center. But he didn’t dare press his advantage yet. This kiss was more precious and delicate than anything Dean had ever held in his life. He pulled back gently and smiled when he watched Castiel’s eyes flutter and his head lift off the pillow, instinctually chasing Dean’s lips. “You hungry?”

Castiel recovered from the kiss and took stock of his physical state. “Yes actually, I am.”

“Good, I brought you this.” Dean turned and slid the small plastic cup at his elbow across Castiel’s little tray. Castiel took it and peeled back the lid, staring at the contents skeptically.

“This is meant to be eaten?”

“It’s pudding, it’s a dessert.” Dean smiled.

“So it’s sweet?” 

“Yeah. I think you’ll like it, it’s vanilla.”

\--end--

Ending A/N: This was too long to put in the actual notes, but I need to share it. You don't have to read it but this is a bit more personal explanation of why this deeply personal fanfiction felt necessary to me.

So as I said I have been completely without Supernatural in my life for the past seven years. Way back when, I was absolutely one of those all-in, absolutely bonkers fans on tumblr. I loved this show. It was my favorite of the unholy trinity by far, and Destiel was the first same sex ship that I absolutely lost my gourd over. I’ve come back now, years later as a (finally) out and proud bisexual to analyze my past obsessions and try and fit together the puzzle of my repressed past.

So. Supernatural, Destiel. How did it contribute to my journey- why did thinking about Dean Winchester all of a sudden move my recently-out ass to tears? Well let’s think about teen me. I related to Dean. More like- I admired Dean and wanted to be like him. “That’s the kind of man I want to be.” I say to myself/sometimes others (as a mostly cis female). But being raised Cis female you are trained from an early age to relate to male protagonists in stories no differently than you would a female. He is you and you are him and that just feels right. Dean Winchester is the protagonist of this story. Sam comes close and some people would argue for him, but to me it’s always felt very clear that this story is being told through Dean’s lens. The soundtrack gives it away the most, that’s the music dean likes, not Sam. The season 5 ending was supposed to be final, with the hero’s happily ever after.

I’m getting away from the point here, some part of me aspires to be like Dean. There’s just something about those piece of shit hero types who save the world on the regular, dole out sarcasm, get whatever women they want just by winking at them, and repress crippling self doubt and insecurity under layers and layers of suffocating machismo. Dean Winchester hates himself. But the world is his.

So one could say that this immediate identification with suave, womanizing men is what points to my bisexuality. Clearly I want to be able to wag my eyebrows at a busty waitress and take her home when her shift ends, as my role model would do. And I have come to believe lately that is somewhat the case, but then why would I be unhappy with Dean sleeping only with women? Why did my 15 year old self (and my 24 year old self now that she’s going through the receipts of her bisexual repression) become so fixated on and thrilled by the idea of Dean and Castiel being romantically involved?

It’s because I’m gay. And I want my proxy to be gay as well. Dean is a cis man, which means that sleeping with women is his heterosexual normative behavior. To Dean this is safe, straightforward, non-crisis inducing, repressive behavior. (I don’t mean to say here that a bisexual person engaging in opposite sex relationships is repressing themselves, I mean specifically in Dean’s narrative he seems to guard himself from the women he sleeps with and use sex as distraction/deflection and possibly a method to avoid closet-talk. The “bisexuality as myth” was a big obstacle I had to overcome which is why Dean had to in this fic) And that’s why although appealing to me on the surface level as a bisexual person who liked seeing a man and woman kiss in their underwear, is ultimately unsatisfying. I want to see the character I relate to most, experience the same confusion, doubt, and anxiety that I face. And I want him to ultimately overcome his fear and embrace his repressed homosexual tendencies and be fully realized as a bisexual male.

Of course, I didn’t realize I was feeling all of these things until years later, but how was I to know? The fact that Cas and Dean are both male presenting didn’t help young me piece together that her obsession with them was actually an indicator that she wanted to date women. I used to jokingly say “gay ships are better because it’s two men instead of one.” When I was going through that age of “everything is about sex now” the only same sex ships I was seeing online were male/male. Nobody on tumblr was shipping female characters because we were so starved for female representation in the cringe television of the Superwholock era. I was forced to identify with Dean Winchester, and therefore my sexual crisis found an outlet in Destiel. Cas means change for Dean. Cas means looking inward and confronting the things about yourself that you dislike, that you hide and that you don’t understand. And choosing Cas means making peace with and even learning to love those things. If Dean Winchester really is a tightly wound ball of repressed bisexual anxiety- as I truly believe he is- then admitting and accepting his romantic and sexual feelings for Castiel (in Jimmy Novak’s body at least) would mean being set free. It would mean unwinding that ball of nerves.(Perhaps not completely- as there’s still a slew of trauma placed on Dean by his father besides internalized homophobia.) If I had been able to see a hero like Dean Winchester be unwaveringly confident in his attraction to women AND to men? To hear him say the word ‘bisexual’ out loud, well I hope it might have confirmed to little baby me that it was perfectly natural to also admire the busty ladies the Winchester’s were wooing.

I’m a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, so I don’t think it’s coincidence that I was lured back into Supernatural mere months before all Super Hell broke loose. I cried. I didn’t expect to, but I did. It was really great having Castiel validate the love that we had all been seeing on screen for years. But I think all of us were left with a bitter taste in our mouths when we didn’t get anything in return from Dean. Too bad I’m not from Brazil, “probre de mi.” But I like to hope and imagine that finally, in death, Dean was able to finish his sentence. It took me longer than I would have liked to finish mine, but I’ve gotten my tetanus shots so I have a lot of life still to enjoy. I truly hope that popular media gets its shit together and stops queer-baiting and confusing future generations of lgbtqa+ children. Baby steps guys, we're doing it.


End file.
